Analyzing the Competition

Some of you may have noticed that the sole purpose of my blog isn't actually to continually provide you with delicious recipes and sub-par photos. For those of you who aren't aware, Beluga Bakery is actually my senior project at Alaska Pacific University and I have every intention of starting this business after I graduate. As of now it is just a dream, but that dream is rapidly growing and expanding. In fact, I just finished the rough draft of my business plan Friday. I'm pretty happy about that and feeling more accomplished than I have the majority of this semester. With just about one month to go in my college career, things are coming down to the wire and as more deadlines come up, so do thoughts like, "OH MY GOD WHAT AM I GOING TO DO AFTER THIS IS ALL OVER!?" Starting 10 December 2011, I will be armed with a degree from APU in Liberal Studies, a business plan, a hope and a dream. I don't want to get stuck doing something that I don't love. Life is too short for that. So, Beluga Bakery must come to life.

With that said, today I am going to share one of my recent senior project/business planning activities that I think was actually pretty interesting and definitely informative. Oh, and don't worry, the enjoyment of baked goods was involved. In fact, there was so much enjoyment that it became discomfort in the form of a sugar overdose and stomach ache.

Last weekend, Tom and I traveled to a few local businesses here in Anchorage that I believe will be competition for the future Beluga Bakery. We started with Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop, moved on to Sugarspoon, Modern Dwellers, and then ended at the Flying Dutchman. We got one of every cookie being sold that day from each place, brought them home and taste tested that night. This is what the collection looked like prior to our digging in:

Too. Many. Cookies.

We started with what we believed was going to be the least enjoyable, the Flying Dutchman. Here's what the box full of Flying Dutchman cookies looked like:

Keep in mind that none of these photos were taken with the intention of being put on my blog. I took these for personal reference so that I could remember each cookie consumed amongst the mass of cookies that night. Cookies are not the Flying Dutchman's strong suit. When we picked up the cookies, I also got a tart, which was delicious, but none of these cookies were too great. The moppens, however, were delicious. I'm not exactly sure what a moppen is, but it tasted like a little shortbread cookie. They weren't too bad. Nothing in this cookie box that was worth going back for, though.

Next we opened up the bag from Modern Dwellers. Although Modern Dwellers isn't exactly a bakery, they provide baked goods with organic ingredients on a regular basis, which definitely poses a significant threat to Beluga Bakery. When we stopped in they had two cookies available, both a dark chocolate oat cookie, and another oat cookie made with their spicy Mayan chocolate.  Here's what they looked like:

The spicy chocolate cookie was spicy! I have gotten their spicy drinking chocolate before and I definitely enjoy it but it was pretty intense to bite into this cookie. The spice lingered. Both cookies had a really nice consistency and were obviously high quality, kind of expensive, but worth it in my mind!


Next we moved on to the cookie from Sugarspoon. They usually only have one cookie available at Sugarspoon each day because they are more of a dessert/pastry place, with lots of different cakes, bars, etc. I've never been crazy about Sugarspoon, but I think it's okay. The cookies at Sugarspoon are huge! Here's what it looked like:

Practically the size of the plate, insane!

 Butterscotch oatmeal was a fun combination, I'm not crazy about butterscotch, but it was a perfectly acceptable cookie. Nothing I would go back to buy, but edible. The consistency was nice and the cookie was baked fairly evenly. Overall, nothing too impressive, which has been my general experience at Sugarspoon.

Lastly, we tried the cookies from Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop. We definitely saved the best for last. Fire Island had a fair amount of sandwich cookies, and some interesting flavor choices, like a ginger molasses cookie with lemon creme filling. Here's a close-up of that cookie:

Once again, sorry for the poor quality phone photos, but I didn't have a blog post in mind at the time,

There were two other sandwich cookies: a chocolate cookie with chocolate creme filling, and a peanut butter cookie with peanut butter creme filling (hands down the best cookie of the night). The bakeshop also had a chocolate chip cookie, and various flavors of Parisian macaroons (we tried both pumpkin and chocolate). All of Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop's cookies were definitely worth going back for.

Easily the best cookie tasted that night: peanut butter with peanut butter creme filling. Delicious.

A little something different...Parisian macaroons.

 We ranked each cookie on a 1 to 5 scale, and then gave each bakery an overall rating. I averaged these rankings to come up with our own perceived quality of each of the four bakeries:

Flying Dutchman: 2.432
Modern Dwellers: 3.625
Sugarspoon: 3
Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop: 3.875

Perhaps we were tough critics, but it was nice to get an idea of the competition in the Anchorage area. I feel a little more prepared now, and a little more confident about the quality of my product.